NTHE Question #10

August 21, 2014

Have you actually accepted the fact that you will die at all?

I think westerners have been raised to feel that death is a personal failure. A shameful lapse in judgment or discipline or effort, something that could be staved off at least 100 years if not indefinitely if only we are good enough. Death becomes the terrifying (and embarrassing) punishment for not living properly, and we build unbelievable walls around ourselves to protect against the idea that it is inevitable.

I’d rather not die in pain or fear, but I think I’ve come to peaceful terms with the idea that I will die. Embracing the data behind STHE means coming to peaceful terms with the idea that I will die somewhat sooner than I might otherwise. Paradoxically, it is the people who won’t accept death who will make the struggle for (my) comfort, setting up emergency measures, and shelters and rationed supplies and makeshift economies in their struggle for order and control to the last minute. With any luck, the one thing they won’t be that concerned about is keeping me alive when my own body says enough. Crazy, but thank you.

_______

Catch Nature Bats Last on the radio with Mike Sliwa and Guy McPherson. Tune in every Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, or catch up in the archives here. If you prefer the iTunes version, including the option to subscribe, you can click here. Next week’s show will feature an interview with urban farmer Greg Peterson, brief segments on breaking hopium with Lindsay Morrison and Forrest Palmer, news beyond the mainstream, Doomer of the Week, and an update on the climate-change front.

Most importantly, we’re throwing out the script and paying attention to feedback offered here. It’s bound to be better than last week.

Find and join the Near-Term Human Extinction Support Group on Facebook here

_______

If you have registered, or you intend to register, please send an email message to guy.r.mcpherson@gmail.com. Include the online moniker you’d like to use in this space. I’ll approve your registration as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Comments 80

Extinction makes death meaningless. If everyone dies, then there is no one left around to think of you, set flowers on your grave, look at photos and remark what a relief it is that you’re finally dead. Or whatever.

Since death is rendered meaningless, only life counts.

Whether or not I die by my own hand, in a food riot, in a war, or by inches on a burning street corner is a fractional concern to what I do with my life now. It would be foolish to base one’s life on the very end of it.

I also find that Western culture is more afraid of aging than of death. There can be a heroic death. No one gets old heroically.
There is no honor in living longer than your classmates, though that’s often the goal of many. The dead can be remembered, the old just get in the way.

.
@ Grant:
perfect, I totally agree for the most part (but, how do I know when I’m just old and in the way?). But, NTHE hasn’t “made” death meaningless – since the end was always the same, just “when” was the unknown. Our sun will one day engulf the Earth – so our extinction is pretty certain – barring space travel or UFOs coming and saving us. So, we will all be long forgotten, unremembered, while our widely scattered subatomic particles float lifelessly, aimlessly, in the cold, dark, expanse of space.
.
.
just sittin’ on this runaway train, staring out the window, with a cat on my lap.

The Voluntary Extinction Movement
Thou shalt not procreate.

The Church of Euthanasia
Save the planet, kill yourself.

Somewhere, there are church bells ringing and children eating dirt.
.
.
Time, flowing like a river
Time, beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea

Goodbye my love, Maybe for forever
Goodbye my love, The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea

Till it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore

Goodbye my friends, Maybe forever
Goodbye my friends, The stars wait for me
Who knows where we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea

Aug 16 TEP radio: “There is no end in sight to this virus” – No end in sight to Ebola outbreak, WHO official says – USA Today

August 2014 – AFRICA – (Aug 20th) – There is no end in sight to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to the head of the World Health Organization. “No one is talking about an early end to the outbreak,” writes Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. She says the outbreak is likely to last “many more months.” Chan blames the size and severity of the outbreak – which has killed 1,350 people – on poverty. At least 2,473 people have been diagnosed with the virus. “The hardest-hit countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – are among the poorest in the world,” Chan writes. “They have only recently emerged from years of conflict and civil war that have left their health systems largely destroyed or severely disabled and, in some areas, left a generation of children without education.” Ebola is one of a half-dozen major disease outbreaks recently caused by war or the devastation left behind by conflict, says Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In Syria, for example, health workers have diagnosed 36 cases of polio since the beginning of the civil war. In Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, “there is no confidence in government or its ability to respond,” Hotez says. “This is all a consequence of public health breakdown.” In West Africa, only one or two doctors are available for every 100,000 people, Chan writes, and “even hospital capacity for infection control is virtually non-existent.” Nearly 160 health workers have been infected, and 80 have died, Chan writes.

Poverty also has driven the spread of the Ebola virus by forcing people to cross borders to find work. The intersection of these three countries is the “designated hot zone,” she writes. In Guinea, about 60% of cases are linked to burial practices, in which family members wash the bodies of the dead, Chan writes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent workers to West Africa to help identify cases and trace their contacts, so exposed people can be closely monitored. Lack of education has amplified fear of the disease, leading some people to flee treatment centers or hide infected family members, which allows the disease to spread, Chan writes. That’s made the greatest risk of infection come not from people diagnosed with Ebola but from “delayed detection and isolation,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden writes in an accompanying editorial.

“Every day that disease transmission remains uncontrolled, the likelihood of spread to unaffected countries increases,” he writes. “If a single case is missed … another chain of transmission can start.” Rumors spread quickly, allowing some people to succumb to alleged miracle cures. Chan notes that at least two Nigerians died after drinking saltwater, which was said to protect them from Ebola. Beyond combating the outbreak, Frieden says, the United States should help “put systems in place to prevent another one.” The United States joined the WHO in launching the Global Health Security Agenda, which aims to help countries prevent outbreaks, as well as detect them and respond quickly. The plan addresses threats from new viruses, such as bird flu, as well as bioterrorism. Hospitals in the USA are far better prepared than those in West Africa to contain an Ebola infection, Hotez says. Though an infected patient could travel to the USA on a plane, Hotez says, routine infection control practices would not allow the disease to spread widely. –USA Today

August 2014 – ICELAND – An intense earthquake swarm continues to rattle Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano, adding to fears that a potential eruption could disrupt the region’s air traffic. Weather officials say they detected about 1,000 small quakes through Tuesday night, which were triggered by an unusually strong earthquake on Monday. The tremors are tied to the increasing movement of magma underground. “Similar to recent days, two pulses of comparably strong seismic activity have been measured between 04:00 (GMT) and 08:00 this morning, as well as 16:00 and 18:30 in the afternoon,” the Icelandic Met Office wrote on Tuesday night, according to a post published this morning. Met officials this week issued an “orange” aviation warning – the fourth-highest on a five-grade scale – following a magnitude-4.0 earthquake on Monday, the strongest in the region since 1996. The warning indicates “heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption.” The Bardarbunga last erupted in 1910, though according to the Met Office, seismic activity has been gradually increasing around the volcano over the past seven years.

Officials published a summary of all regional earthquake activity since the onset of the swarm on Saturday. Blue dots show the earliest quakes while orange dots show the most recently recorded activity. Light blue and yellow dots represent the tremors in-between. As of now, the Met Office says there are still no signs of magma moving to the surface near the Bardarbunga. The conical “stratovolcano” is located beneath Vatnajokull, Europe’s biggest glacier, and stretches 15.5 miles wide and nearly 6,300 feet above sea level. The Grimsvotn volcano, just south of Bardarbunga, erupted in May 2011, spewing an ash cloud into the air and forcing flight cancellations in Scotland, northern England and Germany. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano is farther southwest, near Iceland’s Atlantic-facing coast. Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption in April 2010 caused airlines to cancel more than 10,000 flights. –IB Times

And the meteor sped through space taking dead aim upon the earth. The dinosaurs began to commiserate amongst themselves, “are you ready to die, have you accepted that fact” and oh how the dopamine levels plummeted and everyone held hands and cried crocodile tears. Meanwhile, beneath the forest canopy the little mammals were busily preparing their winter hoards. They frolicked and played as they worked, not a whimper to be heard, life is good. Boom! The meteor hits and the dinosaurs are all but destroyed, but the little mammals that scrambled below ground and used stores of food and oxygen, were saved and gave rise to the Age of Mammals.

Like RE, I would rather try being a survivor. Am I going to die? Most certainly and in many ways it will be a relief, but those that don’t “struggle” are generally thrown back into the organic mulch pile to be used by those that do – the survivors. The hell with being heroic and the hell with trying to educate the ineducable. If your still paying a banker for the privilege of living in an area whose summer highs will reach 145F, then sorry about your stupidity. Or if you’re renting a space, paying off someone else’s loan on an apartment complex, sorry about that too. You’d best be squirreling away your acorns where the rats can’t get to them.

The little mammals survived by chance and the dinosaurs died by chance, but humans can anticipate the future and trends. Guy says positive feedbacks will destroy most multicellular life, but just as the climate models have failed to anticipate the rapidity of change, they may also have overlooked a rapid external negative feedback. Anyway, it’s more fulfilling trying to live than preparing to die.

The idea that life is not supernatural and that when you die you’re gone to oblivion and it’s like you never really existed is something that most people refuse to even humor. Instead they build these edifices of belief that death is a transition and that their consciousness continues on. Even at the risk of being on the wrong side of the Heaven-Hell issue they prefer to avoid the idea that death might be final.

I haven’t any irrefutable information, one way or the other so I’m consigned to agnostic-ville for now. Kind of a win-win for me, if you think about it.

.
I live in reality-ville for now, where everyone realizes that life is meaningless and that all we have to look forward to is a cold, dark, expanse of space where our widely scattered subatomic particles will float lifelessly, aimlessly, amidst the vast emptiness. There will be no remembering in the end.
.
There is no reason.
There is no purpose.
There is no sense.
There is no meaning.
.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!

Ecclesiastes 8:10
Then too, I saw the wicked buried–those who used to come and go from the holy place and receive praise in the city where they did this. This too is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Yes, a long time ago. Before I knew that NTHE was actually happening, its simple logic that tells me that nothing, in this universe, lasts forever in an ordered state. Someday this universe will become a homogenous blob of evenly distributed energy, ie: dead. Nothing material will remain; no artifacts of great civilizations, no written tales of heroes exploits, no trace of life having ever existed.

So, not only does everyONE die, but everyTHING dies too, gradually over truly unfathomable lengths of time, disintegrating completely at a subatomic level, returning to the state that it once was.

A full circle.

But the length of time that takes, is what makes it so unreal to so many. Thinking of 10^150 years is basically just a thought experiment to most people… its not actually “real”.

Except that it is. Death is inevitable, even for the universe itself.

I think that this problem, of not accepting that death is real, in The West, is a function of materialism and the rejection of anything not material as being “not real”. Materialism precludes any sort of “afterlife”, and facing oblivion is not only literally incomprehensible, but scary because it is incomprehensible. Oblivion is non-existence; it itself does not exist, and something that does not exist cannot be conceptualized, because doing so calls it into existence, and it is no longer what it was supposed to be.

It really all comes down to a lack of understanding, though, brought about by a dominant reductionist paradigm, which creates division and separation where none is actually present.

People (Western, at least) think they “exist”, as if that is an attribute that can be attached to things, and taken away from things. Two sides that things can flip between, “exist” and “does not exist”.

One day you exist, the next, you dont.

But its not really like that. You already do not exist.

Even, you cannot “exist” as some attachable attribute that can be unattached at a future date.

Either you exist, or you do not. If you do exist, its not an attribute, its a fundamental intrinsic quality that cannot be removed. Same with not existing. It literally becomes your nature. It becomes you, and you become it (in a mental framework sort of way, you dont actually become anything, because you already are and always have been).

The core misunderstanding is the above.

You do not “exist”, because you are existence.

When a person comes to realize this, and actually know it as truth, death becomes something very different than it is made out to be in The West. Its no longer the absolute terminus of all things, but simply a new beginning.

High methane concentrations have been showing up over Beaufort Sea over the past few days, as shown on the image below. This follows the recent high methane concentrations over the East Siberian Sea.

The persistent character of these very high methane concentrations over the Arctic Ocean indicates that methane has started to erupt from clathrates under the seabed, triggered by very warm water reaching the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Methane eruptions from hydrates in sediments under the Arctic Ocean helped mean methane levels reach new records, with mean global methane readings as high as 1835 parts per billion recorded at several altitudes on August 17, 2014.

“With any luck, the one thing they won’t be that concerned about is keeping me alive when my own body says enough.”

Better make sure you have your Advance Health Care Directives in order, because if you end up in the hospital, they will do everything in their power to artificially keep you alive and pain free, even though you may be outwardly incapacitated and suffering inside as you want it to end. The medical establishment believes it’s “humane” treatment.

I think that is analogous to what our civilization will be doing in response to our collective extinction. This means that even though some of us will be insulated from the worst effects (physical pain, hunger, deprivation), we will not be free from inner suffering as we watch the degradation of other living beings around us. Those who mourn the victims of war, disease, starvation, and extinction of other species already have an inkling of that feeling. There are no “advance directives” to circumvent inevitability of suffering, other than “pulling the plug.”

@Tom…you asked K.M. about who were the good guys and the bad guys re the Dirty Politics book. Google a picture of the books chief protagonist Cameron Slater which may help your understanding!
There is little to choose between any of them when coming from “our” point of view, as they all stress the economy, jobs and growth deal that has been preached forever. There may be some difference as in Fred Reed’s obituary for the great Joe Bageant where he states “I’ve never met a socialist who didn’t care about others , or a capitalist who did”, but beyond that nothing of significance.
Given my background I should be a natural “Green Party” supporter but consider them a bunch of “sellout”s, more concerned with social engineering than saving life on earth and devoid of any real insight into our true situation.

You all might like to You Tube “Planet Key”, which is a four minute perfect parody of our prick of a prime minister and a damn fine bit of blues as well.

A correction as well to my post of a week or two ago re our local climate, a casualty of my rushed one figure typing at the local library.

Our record July temperature of 7.6c was the AVERAGE temperature and not the ABOVE average temperature as I had stated. It was a full 2c above average however and just short of the 1988 all time record of 7.7c.

It is yet another indication of just how fast this train is starting to run out of control and yet only gets token passing reference in our MSM. Likewise our far north has been hit by repeated floods that threaten to bankrupt our newer dairy farmers, yet these are the very people who are generally the biggest deniers of AGW.

I had made up my mind not to ever vote in an election again, but may change mind such is the contempt I have for our current Government. I continue to dig and plant, which is a far more productive and satisfying activity than politics is or ever will be.

@Edward Kerr: “…Instead they build these edifices of belief that death is a transition and that their consciousness continues on.”

…which is a load of rotting bollocks! I mean floating around in the either as a disembodied consciousness for all eternity? Really? To what end?

And If we don’t need a physical body to maintain consciousness, why are we born into one in the first place? What’s the point if it’s not actually necessary? How come we don’t have conscious awareness from *before* we are born?

None of it makes any sense. Except, of course, as a device to deal with the fear of oblivion.

Aubade
By Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

I have accepted it, but I’m also hedging. I have been sucking up to Ray Kurzweil hoping to get one of the first seats on “The Singularity”….or am I thinking of the ARK in Kentucky? Getting hard to keep up with all my cargo cults. Any way, I have been sending Ray all sorts of bottles of life extending supplements, hoping he will take pity and bump me to the front of the line. I’m not sure I’m doing enough, I better give Elon Musk a call. Apparently, he is building a hybrid spaceship…..maybe there is a seat left in coach.

Yes, I accept that NTHE is “baked in the cake” but I am trying hard to understand the process so I can position myself to be one of the last to expire. Witnessing the end of your own species is an incredible event that I don’t want to miss. The thing that I wonder about most is what are those still alive going to do with all the dead bodies piling up. 7-8 billion HS (plus countless billion of other species) are not going to die over a few days but rather over a few years.

I live in an old norcal community with many vestiges of post-war prosperity still standing. Mid-20th design still reigns here. Gentrification took a pass.

Every morning around 5:30 the pups and I go for a walk to the local park before I leave for work. I find myself stopping to stare at the local church, the forlorn old masonic hall next door. This was a vibrant neighborhood once – all post-war modern homes, the really beautiful kind that were cutting edge in 1960, the kind that were once featured in Sunset Magazine, the kind my family couldn’t afford when I was a kid. It has the feeling of a neglected monument; a museum that no longer interests anyone. An anachronism.

I sometimes think that it is possible that I died already, and all of this is just an echo. And further, that it is only in the echo that I see things as they truly are for the first time… that there is no god, that capitalism is and always has been a lie, that America is the evil empire, that contrary to the teaching of my born again youth, it may in fact be kinder and more loving to keep the truth as I understand it to myself.

Of course, I am daily reminded that I am completely alive by the aches and pains and busted knuckles and stubbed toes that come my way in the struggle to keep a roof over my head. But, my mind is changing… my feelings about things, myself and the world, are changing. I don’t fully understand the process I am going through although I try.

Yeah, it seems like accepting your own imminent death is a doorway to yourself.

“Every morning around 5:30 the pups and I go for a walk to the local park before I leave for work. I find myself stopping to stare at the local church, the forlorn old masonic hall next door. This was a vibrant neighborhood once – all post-war modern homes, the really beautiful kind that were cutting edge in 1960, the kind that were once featured in Sunset Magazine, the kind my family couldn’t afford when I was a kid. It has the feeling of a neglected monument; a museum that no longer interests anyone. An anachronism.”

I love the sound of this, but I’m drawing a blank on what those houses would look like. Do you have any visuals I can link to?

I will take some pictures and post them for you. These were true mid class homes that took their cue from Sunset, not the extravaganzas that come up in a google search for the most part, I think. The thing I find most interesting about them is how egalitarian they now appear… yet, beautiful also. haha.

Death is not a personal failure, death is inevitable. Comes to everybody, every species and every planet at some point.

Everybody ever born eventually died. So will you, so will I. What you do in the interim between Birth & Death is to stay alive. If people or animals or plants didn’t do that, every day you would have people walking in front of buses and stepping off cliffs because they didn’t care whether they lived or died.

Antelope would not run away from Lions, because why would they care whether they could graze another day or not? The imperative of life is to stay alive as long as you can.

In this situation, you have a deteriorating ecosystem. So following the imperative to stay alive, you do what you can for as long as you can given those parameters. This makes CFS.

On other fronts, I dropped on Part I of an Interview with Dmitry Orlov we did last Sunday.

44 south: I figured that in politics – they’re all cut from the same cloth – but was just looking for who ‘the people’ will get the best ‘deal’ from (to keep business as usual going) and who gets ‘it’ and is trying to inject some sanity. Your response indicates nobody (in any position of power) gets it there either. Thanks.

>bold/bold<
Let’s say, everything follows your plans. You have a deep bunker with 5 years of food and water. You have solar and wind power from above. You have a super defense system against all marauders. You’re safe, warm and well-fed. What happens, five years later when you have to emerge, or are you planning to live in this underground home, growing food with grow-lights, tapped into this magical pure water source. There are no malfunction of your power sources. Nothing ever deteriorates, no one EVER falls ill, or you have a trained surgeon on hand. All of this evolves for a million years. Generations and generations and gen….
I don’t wish for an end. I am not depressed or suicidal (abnormally). I own one mirror.
What the FUCK are you guys talking about?

.
There is no logic in taking anything to its logical end.
.
“If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that nobody is here forever. You have to live for the moment, each and every day . . . the here, the now.”
― Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry
.
“All people, except those who suffer from certain mental illnesses, crave relationships that comfort and nurture them. In healthy relationships, individual differences are seen as assets, not liabilities. Each person’s strengths are respected and sought out when needed. In healthy relationships, there is no attempt to reshape the other person. We accept others as they are.”
.
.
just sittin’ on this runaway train, staring out the window, with a cat on my lap.

The Voluntary Extinction Movement
Thou shalt not procreate.

The Church of Euthanasia
Save the planet, kill yourself.

Somewhere, church bells are ringing and there are children eating dirt.

” Paradoxically, it is the people who won’t accept death who will make the struggle for (my) comfort, setting up emergency measures, and shelters and rationed supplies and makeshift economies in their struggle for order and control to the last minute. With any luck, the one thing they won’t be that concerned about is keeping me alive when my own body says enough. Crazy, but thank you.”

I view death, not with eager anticipation, but with what I’d like to think of as a gentle resignation. Death is just part of life. I’d prefer that it be fairly painless and not too messy, but other than that, I have no need to bargain with the grim reaper.

However, as a father and a husband, with many people who depend on me, I have a priority to continue to live for as long as I can provide any kind of useful support for my family and loved ones, and others who might need my help. There is more than prolonging one’s own life to consider, when talking about emergencies and preparations.

I never hear anybody say that, much. Most people seem to be remarkably self-centered to me, but perhaps that’s a misunderstanding I have.

Good point, but it’s still an incredible amount of rotting meat for survivors to deal with. Even the ants that are likely to survive the sixth extinction and that are equal in biomass to humans will have a difficult time devouring all the flesh.

Prioritizing your own children and family IS being very self centered.
If you told me you were prioritizing some other species over your own wellbeing and over your family’s wellbeing; if you told me that you were donating all your available funds to start a hospice for hedgehogs; if you told me that you and your entire family were going to stand between the whales and the exploding harpoons, then I would totally believe that you are not self centered.

I haven’t accepted that my grandchildren might die decades before their time.”

Even beyond my own children and grandchildren, who merely sharpen my perception of the threat to life in general, not staying around to try cleaning up the collective mess humans have made seems like an ignoble escape. “Cleaning up the mess” does not necessarily mean trying to keep everyone (or anyone) alive. What I can control is limited.

#10: I haven’t merely accepted it – I’ve *embraced* it. The fact that it will happen – and at my fairly advanced age that’s going to be sooner rather than later – is a source of great consolation to me.

And although I love a small number of people a great deal, I recognize that the human species has been a bad bet, and I think it’s too bad that it got so totally out of control. Every day I find myself apologizing to this ruined planet for my continued existence. If that sounds nihilistic, so be it.

We compared our results to elevation change rates obtained from ICESat data covering the time period from 2003 to 2009. The comparison reveals that in West Antarctica the volume loss has increased by a factor of three. It also shows an anomalous thickening in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica which represents a known large-scale accumulation event. This anomaly partly compensates for the observed increased volume loss of the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica. For Greenland we find a volume loss in-creased by a factor of 2.5 compared to the ICESat period with large negative elevation changes concentrated at the west and southeast coasts.

combined volume change of Greenland and Antarctica for the observation period is estimated to be −503±107 km3 yr−1. Greenland contributes nearly 75% to the total volume change with −375±24 km3 yr−1

i feel the same way except I am so bitter and angry over the destruction of this planet and the people on it by those that would only think of themselves. All I can think of is cuss words. U would not believe some of my posts. If I cud just get my hands on their throats… or maybe in front of me with my father’s .38, that has never been fired, that he got from a guard of a bank that retired after 30-40 years… or maybe in a torture room somewhere…

“If you told me you were prioritizing some other species over your own wellbeing and over your family’s wellbeing; if you told me that you were donating all your available funds to start a hospice for hedgehogs; if you told me that you and your entire family were going to stand between the whales and the exploding harpoons, then I would totally believe that you are not self centered.”

I have twenty acres set aside in wild Liatris pycnostachya and native grasses on the flight path of the Monarchs, at the moment. My entire place is a wildlife preserve for deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, bats, bees, and a long list of other species. So perhaps I’m not quite as anthropocentric as you think I am.

I’m a doer, not an airy-fairy bullshitter. I have no need to apologize to you or anyone else. To fault a man for trying to care for those he loves? Well, that says more about your delusions than it does mine. Is it that I sound…patriarchal? Hey, news flash, I’m a father. I was a father before it went out of style. I’ve been sterilized for more than twenty years, btw. I’m not having any more kids. But supporting other people has been a big part of my life. It’s how I’ve defined myself.

Growing local food is a good, sustainable, earth-friendly, animal friendly practice. I practice the ethics and principles of permaculture, to the best of my ability, in all that I do. I have a permaculture design for my little corner of the world that I will spend whatever time I have left developing, and I will try to respond to change, which happens to be a permaculture principal, by the way.

I have no illusions that I will triumph over climate change, but I’ll do what I can, while I can.

I just don’t get how you feel so okay about judging people you don’t even know. This blog post asks a question about NTHE, and it solicits answers. As far as I can tell, it isn’t an invitation for you or other readers to pick apart the honest, sincere comments of real people who are trying to be part of the solution rather than the problem.

For me, thinking about these questions is therapeutic. Writing a comment gives me a way to grapple with the deep emotions that often come up for me, living with the specter of NTHE on a daily basis, as all of us do.

You might have noticed that I haven’t asked you about your bona fides, or whether you’ve taken any harpoons in your butt to save the whales or the hedgehogs, or whether you volunteer in an assisted suicide clinic for depressed feminist doomers. Whatever fine things you might have done in defense of Mother Earth, or whether you haven’t done diddly squat…that’s your life, not mine.

I think each of us has to look into our own hearts and decide how we will deal with the potential of NTHE, and that each of us will have to work off our own karma and learn our own lesson from this life. How you deal with NTHE is your business and your narrative.

As for the beach, I’m heading there tomorrow with my camera. I’m going to try to photograph tarpon and sea turtles and coral, and do the same thing I do this time every year, which is to look carefully with my own eyes and try to see if I can tell if my favorite part of the ocean is dying or holding its own. I wonder if this will be the last time I get to do that.

‘Kevin: I see that some book called Dirty Politics is having a big impact on the coming election. Trouble is – I can’t figure out the “bad guys” from the “good guys.” Care to clue me in?’

First you have the extraordinarily bad guys, These are the ones who promote rampant consumerism, sale of NZ land to overseas corporations, looting of the commons by any means possible, polluting of the land, air and water, expansion of industrialised agriculture, Ponzi schemes, secret trade deals signed behind closed doors, public misinformation campaigns, nepotism cronyism and anything Orweliian and dysfunctional. These go under he brand name National. John Key, ex-Wall St currency manipulator and speculator with strong Jewish connexions heads the National government. He is extremely popular amongst the uninformed masses because he spends most of his time smiling and waving as he gets on and off planes to and from visits to other psychotic sociopaths, and has succeeded in fooling a large portion of the NZ public, rather as Hitler did in the mid-1930s. National is very likely to be returned to power at the next election, either by popular support (which says a lot about New Zealanders, but don’t forget that NZ is totally dominated by Auckland (Orcland), Wellington and the remains of Christchurch, where around half the population live), or by vote rigging. Because NZ society, economy and environment are collapsing somewhat more slowly that most others Key is perceived by the ignorant masses as doing a good job. Lying continuously helps maintain the façade.

Then you have the ultra-nasty bad guys, the remnant of the group who gained power under false pretences (socialism) in the 1980s, and set in motion globalisation, selling-off of community assets to their mates at discount prices etc., performing what would normally be regarded as acts of treason. Having done massive damage, they broke away from faux socialism and formed their own loot-and-pollute-and-exploit party. These are known as ACT, and still have support despite the well-documented crimes of all the major personalities. As with National, supporter are ignorant, stupid and stubborn.

You have the rather nasty guys, the left-overs from the betrayal of socialism of the 1980s to 2000s, plus a few opportunists who have merged since the catastrophic Clark government which set to ruining everything at a faster pace than National. These are known as Labour (but this is a totally faux label because the party stands for globalisation, corporatisation, looting and polluting of the environment and screwing the general populace. it is good to see Labour languishing in the polls, since they stand for betrayal.

There is another bunch of ‘bad guys’, the faux save-the-planet party who at various times have promoted international tourism as a ‘sustainable’ component of the NZ economy, biofuels made from food, money-printing to stimulate the economy, and ‘an enquiry into loss of manufacturing jobs’. These are known as the Greens, despite there being almost nothing green about them. I prefer to describe them as liars and fuckwits. the last time they had any influence was when they were in bad with Helen Clark and supporting globalisation, money-lending and pretty much everything non-green you can think of (though they did oppose GE crops).

A new party emerged from the remnants of genuine social concern and I cannot describe these people as bad guys. Well they weren’t until they got hitched to a self-promoter who wears a baseball cap backwards and goes under the name of Kim.com. Like all other parties this group consists of deluded fools. However, they may have enough support to give national a bit of a fright.
There are a few other bad guys, such as the Maoris Party, which at one time was talking about GPI, peak oil, climate change etc., but then thought better of it and sold out to National for a few crumbs that might fall off the table.

I might just remind you that we have an MMP system whereby
governments are formed by various combinations of liars, self-servers and fools. The real owners are quite happy with that state of affairs. Just as long as there is no threat to the real power base the real owners will tolerate any collection of bad guys. That said, National is taking badness to a new level, and the covert fascism which as characterised NZ for decades is rapidly morphing into overt fascism under John Key’s ‘leadership’. That’s one reason he is known as the smiling assassin by anyone with a brain that still functions properly (now only a tiny portion of the populace, I’m afraid: the junk food, consumerism and corporatized sport have taken their toll.

According to Robert Atack there is one group of good guys, the 1080 party who are opposed to the use of sodium floroacetate because is results in a slow and painful death, not only to the target species (possums), but to anything else that ingests ii. NZ is one of only two places in the world where 1080 is used, I believe. It’s all to do with being ‘clean and green’.

I have not taken much interest in ‘Dirty Politics’ because I have had first-hand experience and already know everything is ‘dirty’ and corrupt, and is maintained [in the short term] via a continuous supply of fabrications and lies. Indeed, my view is that if the matter is being given coverage by the media it is fairly trivial. It’s the things which are not being covered by the media you have to look out for.
I hope that explains why there is no hope and why I am loathe to even go to town for the next few weeks. That said, last week I did confront Andrew Little, the ‘Labour’ candidate, who bought a copy of ‘The Easy Way’ and with whom I had discussion about peak oil, Ponzi economics and abrupt climate change, and pointed out that he was a lair and a charlatan, and that it was the betrayal of the people of NZ by his party that set NZ on its current disastrous consumeristic path. He ran, as they all do, when confronted with the truth.

By the way, Andrew Judd, our 9-months-elected mayor, is the local smiling assassin, having betrayed everything he said he stood for prior to his election.

If there is one word that sums up NZ politics it is surely betrayal.

I considered contacting the Electoral Office and asking them to produce voting papers with a ‘No candidate worthy of my vote’ option, but I already know such an option will not be made available.

No, I hate that @ thing…such poor manners. Not going to do that anymore.

Dear Wren

I wonder if I bother you because I come across as “patriarchal” ….which is a negative buzzword hereabouts. As I’ve made abundantly clear in all my comments here, I am a father and a husband and a householder. Ulvfugl talks about narratives…providing support for other people, both family and friends and even people who work for me,, is a big part of my narrative. I don’t apologize for that. I became a father long ago, before it went out of style. I actually had myself sterilized more than twenty years ago. I wonder how many of those in the “Church of Euthanasia” have taken that step?

Even back in the day, I thought long and hard about the ethics of bringing children into this world, but decided to do it. Life is about choices. I don’t regret that particular one.

I have, for your information, a small bit of land, of which I am currently the steward. It happens to be right on the flight path of the Monarch migration. I have several acres there (about 10, I think roughly) which is given over to wild grasses and Liatris pycnostachya, for their benefit. They mate there, although their numbers are less every year. Most of the rest of my place (an additional 25 or so acres) is a wildlife refuge…for deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, bats, bees, and host of other wild animal, insect, and plant species.

I am a permaculturist by both training an inclination. One principal of permaculture is to create a yield..an abundance. You can’t really live up to the ethics of permaculture (which are, earth care, people care, and fair share) unless you do that.

Growing local food, using sustainable practices, is, in my view, the most important thing in the world for people to do right now. I promote that here and everywhere.

Another principle of permaculture is to adapt to change. By trying to adapt to climate change, I’m following what i think is the best path towards a sustainable future on the planet. Whether I’m ultimately successful in adapting to things that are beyond all limits for humans and other species to adapt to…well, to me that isn’t the most important thing. The important thing is that I try to walk the walk.

I have said, and will say, that I am very culpable in this fossil fuel induced poisoning of the planet. I take responsibility, and I’ll accept the karma. I don’t need to be reminded.

As for the beach, I’m headed there tomorrow. I’m taking my camera and I’m going to try to photograph tarpon and sea turtles and coral..and I’m going to do what i do this time every year, which is to try to see, really see, how the part of the ocean I love is dying. So far, it’s so slow I can’t see it. I’ve been looking for maybe 15 years.But I expect to see it if I live long enough. Every time I go there I wonder if it will be that last time I get to see it. But by going there, I’m contributing to its demise. Talk about a paradox.

superficially, certainly. profoundly, perhaps not. this pertains to the mini-essay i submitted for publication here a few weeks ago (i think it will appear in mid september, thanks to the great backlog of material for this blog which has resulted in the present rapid rate of introducing new questions/essays every 2 days) titled FACING DEATH WITH SERENITY. until one can do that, one hasn’t fully accepted mortality imo. exactly how one may achieve this is a discussion i seek. living is an addiction!

‘Either you exist, or you do not. If you do exist, its not an attribute, its a fundamental intrinsic quality that cannot be removed.’ -into destiny

what about consciousness? is it transcendent, or merely biological trickery? ‘i’ may still exist in material form as dead matter for ‘eternity’, but does consciousness simply vanish as mysteriously as it arose? or does it transform? does it even matter?

p.s. i just tried posting this comment twice, each time getting a message saying that i’m posting the comment too fast and need to slow down?! wtf? … maybe the third time will be the charm… no. some spam protection filter is blocking me

3. Make a Distinction Between Significantly Unpleasant and Catastrophe: Key to overcoming catastrophizing is making a distinction between climate being significantly unpleasant and it being a catastrophe.

4. Increase your perception of your ability to cope: If you believe you can cope with negative climate events, anxiety will be much less of a problem for you.

Many a flower wilts, but the sunshine continues on. For the meat robots, there is a transition to recycling of the chemical components.

“You do not “exist”, because you are existence.”

Close, but no cigar. The “you”/”I” is a mirage and has no existence.

“If that sounds nihilistic, so be it.”

To some, the link below may seem to border on it.

tvt: “what about consciousness?”

Well, tvt, this one’s for you. How to distinguish it from the meat robot.

The background is not pertinent to the content, but maybe amusing. The putative author is Ashtavakra (“eight bends” or “eight deformities”). Tradition has it that he was eternally realised, even before birth, and knew all the scriptures, hymns and incantations.

While he was yet to be born, his mother was present at rituals performed by his uncle, who had a lisp. With particularly bad pronunciations he would cringe in utero, resulting in a deformity: this happened eight times, resulting in eight deformities.

Later in life he was the mentor to a king, Janaka, and tradition has it that these instructions resulted in his realisation. The text is short, and even though just over sixty pages, many pages of the PDF are mostly blank after a stanza or two.

“Psychology research on chronic pain and catastrophizing has uncovered three types of mechanisms related to catastrophizing”

1. Rumination – (overthinking)
2. Magnification
3. Helplessness

Catastrophizing Help

Let me tell you something as someone who suffers from chronic pain (19 years) That research is just a small piece and your little list of 3 comes AFTER some long term suffering. It does not cause it. That’s why they use the world related. Like the children of chronic pain, not the parent. It can be some what useful for some people, but it has largely been used to blame the victim. Around 10% of people who get injuries, that would normally heal, never really recover. No one is sure why, so the medical community decided that there must be something wrong with that 10%. Ironically, that leaves the patient feeling more helpless, frustrated and even hopeless. Some take their own lives. It would make a huge difference if they would humble up and say we simply do not know at this point. Hard to do in a society that makes physicians demi-gods many of whom like being worshiped. Fortunately, for me I have managed to get my pain levels down through hard work, giving up physical work, life style changes and sheer personal awesomeness. Others have worked just as hard or harder than me and did not have positive results. No amount of Psycho babble can change reality.

Hey Eddie,
Just an idea after re-reading Wren’s post for the third time…
My take is that she was saying that we’re (nearly) all self-centered to some degree.

Even though she led off with “Prioritizing your own children and family IS being very self centered.”, I didn’t get make the jump from that to a conclusion that being self-centered is a bad thing, or even an avoidable one. From another perspective, even standing in the path of a harpoon is self-centered in the sense that *you* are deciding to act in a way that is based on *your* life experience, judgement, and analysis.

Maybe she wasn’t being snarky or ironic. “Welcome to the Beach” strikes me as being a friendly greeting, inclusive in a less complicated way than is your recursive idea that you are going to the ocean that you love that is dying even though your going speeds its dying. (But you should go, because many who might notice the dying won’t go and many of those that do go won’t notice the dying…sometimes being witnesses is about all we can be.)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Question 10

Yes. I could reflect on death every time I eat something, but I don’t, and I don’t skip meals to avoid feeling guilty about consuming a dead thing on my timetable rather than waiting for it to live out its days and then rely on chancing upon it in some ‘natural’ state.

I was going to try to shoehorn in Douglas Hofstadter’s “Hofstadter’s Law” into the paragraph above that plays with inclusive & recursive (Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law), but now that he’s on my mind, here’s a long quote of his that has to do with why passing a hospital doesn’t make me afraid of death as much as it makes me afraid of being unhealthy and dying any sooner than necessary…and why Guy’s idea of living a life of excellence can be important for us geezers that might check out before the end of the world.

“The key question is, no matter how much you absorb of another person, can you have absorbed so much of them that when that primary brain perishes, you can feel that that person did not totally perish from the earth… because they live on in a ‘second neural home’?… In the wake of a human being’s death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of those who were dearest to them… Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain… a collective corona that still glows.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

On a recent visit to Seattle a friend who is a music collector sat me down to listen to what he termed “Hungarian Folk Death Metal”. Not being much of a metal-head, I was polite but wary, and then pleasantly surprised. Tonight I figured out where I had heard something similar, and conveniently enough, it’s got Death written all over it.

Yes, you’ve come across a fairly significant discovery as to the potential source for what might trigger climatic ‘Dansgaard-Oeschger events’ (natural climatic cycles that run roughly every 1500 years, which also see rapid warming within decades). This paper supports a ‘wetland hypothesis’, as compared to the “clathrate gun hypothesis’. But this latest research has little impact on the observable evidence of ‘anthropogenic global warming’, which is triggering hydrate release as we speak (clathrate gun). The title of the article is a little misleading and slightly sensational, but this paper only helps put to rest, a question which is now more or less irrelevant in regards to the rapid changes now afoot.

Batters on NBL should find this one interesting since we do discuss specifically Guy’s Hypothesis on Near Term Human Extinction in this part of the interview.

Support Note: We still are not sure what is causing the Page Not Found Error for comment submissions. As a test, if you get the error,sign out and try to post as guest. Then sign in again and post as member. Also try posting with and without pastes from other websites.

24. Guy McPherson – maintains Nature Bats Last, the originator of NTHE meme, beloved by his readers – a lanky personable renegade professor emeritus, a voluntary exile full of regret…who might be mistaken as an intellectual frat boy if it weren’t for his soulful sorrow and sincere kindness. Find all his books, posts, videos and most vitally important, his “climate change summary and update” at his website.

From your post, my impression was that you think most of here on this site are very self centered and that you are not.
My point was that we are All self centered (some more, some less) in a biological sense.
And the welcome was genuine, it’s good to hear about what you’re doing with migratory corridor protection. Thank you for doing that.

I think westerners have been raised to feel that death is a personal failure.

Nah.

What happened was that Life itself became too pleasurable. 24/7.

My elderly Parents want to live forever. Abundance is everywhere – and they have…. TV! If you could preserve their heads in a jar and feed them pleasurably flavored nutrients while they watched TV – they would think that is just great.

My Mother watches “Two and a Half Men” and “DWTS” and can’t get enough.

My Father watches Sports endlessly – and even sits through GOLF!

Of course, this week they are at Lake Tahoe – traveling and getting about – thanks to Industrial Civilization – and now they have bragging rights over their friends.

Now in their 80’s – millions of $$$ have been spent to keep them alive, and while they claim to be Christians, who therefore have “Heaven” to look forward to – clearly are resisting all attempts to die.

Even though my Father can now barely walk and shits his pants all day.

Death should be the natural end of a life well lived – if one survives to adulthood –

With the end of Industrial Civilization – and the age of Oil – Death will again be viewed in it’s proper perspective – Until then, the Age of Exuberance will rule!

I really enjoyed the Catton interview, even though there’s room for disagreement. I can’t imagine why I bought the book in the 80s, since I found much of it boring and hard to understand at the time. But the concept of overshoot was clear enough and has stuck firmly in mind. Were it not for that, I might not have spent the time watching this video. I recommend it to others.

Since there are 27 cu.ft. per cubic yard (cu.yd.), the equivalent would be 654,044,363,370.5 cu.yd. or, orally stated, 654 billion, 44 million, 363 thousand and 370 point 5 cubic yards.

If we assume that volume to be concrete for the construction of “Interstate Highways” (which have 2 lanes in each direction, a minimum lane width of 12 feet and a slab thickness of 1 foot, disregarding the “shoulders” and entry/exit ramps) we have a cross-sectional slab area of 48 sq.ft. Therefore, we could construct 69,678,021.7 miles of 4-lane highway. This would be enough to go around the Earth, at the equator, 2,787 times! Lest we forget, that could be done every year for at least the foreseeable future.

If, instead of roads, we wanted to pour one large slab (1 foot thick) for some mall, parking area or other structure, it would be roughly 633,436.5 square miles in size. In other words, this would pave about 95.5% of Alaska’s 663,268 sq.mi. area, not accounting for the variability of elevations, lakes and rivers. If we reduce the slab thickness to 1 inch, we would have 12 times the area which is enough to pave a bit over half the surface of the Earth’s Moon or about 2.5 times the area of the contiguous USA! Again, that is on a per annum basis.

Lastly, if you prefer visualizing a “mountain” and we use the analog of a right circular cone that has a circular base which is 10 miles across (r=5 miles), that cone would be roughly 24,195.5 feet (~4.6 miles) tall! In a few decades, we could have our own man-made range of Himalaya cones! I hope the above has engendered some perspicuity of the ice loss currently underway. 🙂

Excerpts follow. Of course, they’ll continue to be ignored by RE and his anti-science ilk.

In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals.

An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe.

It could find none.

“The eruption would certainly have triggered some short-term effects over perhaps a few seasons but it does not appear to have switched the climate into a new mode,” said Dr Christine Lane from Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

“This puts a nail in the coffin of the disaster-catastrophe theory in my view; it’s just too simplistic,” she told BBC News.

The results of her team’s investigation are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).